The most thankless job on Earth? Behind the scenes with Southern Rail's Twitter team

“At Victoria and absolutely nothing you useless, pathetic, incompetent, thieving, disgraceful excuse for a service providing bunch of idiots. I sincerely hope you all have a thoroughly [rude adjective] Christmas and a [rude verb] awful new year. [rude noun].”

Ah Twitter, we knew you’d have a purpose in the end. It started as a platform from which to tell the world what you’d had for breakfast; a digital Speaker’s Corner for poached egg enthusiasts. Then we started to retweet articles we hadn’t read.

But now, 12 years after its launch, it has finally realised its true calling – as a safe place for hotheads to vent fury at train companies.

In the social media age, it is a prerequisite that all airlines, train companies, shops, even politicians, have a Twitter feed to field questions and general rage from the public. One of the most active of them all is @SouthernRailwayUK, which has sent 611,000 Tweets since arriving (albeit, ahem, slightly later than others... ) on Twitter in July 2010.

As a frequent Southern user, I’ve felt that bubbling sense of injustice when a train is cancelled or delayed. Again. But I’ve always stopped short of hurling my feelings onto social media, mainly because of that symbol – the upwards arrow ^ followed by a name – signifying that it is indeed a fellow human being, not an evil train conductor, on the other end.

I’ve always thought that this, being a train company’s social media responder, must be one of the most thankless jobs in the world. So I caught up with ^Neil, ^Amy, ^Bradley and ^Isana from Southern to hear tales of prosthetic legs being left on trains, why real-time feedback genuinely improves operations, and how Eddie the work experience boy ended up on national TV.

What does a day in the life of Southern look like?

Bradley explains: “We've got a great team of 10 people working 24/7 to support our customers at all hours. All of us are thick skinned, of course. You need to be in this role. An average day mainly focuses around conversations with commuters – often helping people with their journeys to work during the peaks. Outside peak hours the number of mentions drops and we can help with those queries that didn't need a real-time response, such as looking into travel plans for next week.”

How many Tweets do you receive per day?

“It really does depend on how the trains are running,” Bradley says. “If all is going well the numbers can drop below 1,000 a day. On the flip side, it can go extremely high; our record to date is more than 12,000 in one day. Hopefully that doesn't happen again anytime soon!”

How did Eddie the work experience boy end up on national TV?

When he joined Southern Rail on work experience, Eddie Smith never expected to become a viral sensation. But after he sent out a Tweet reading “Hi, Eddie here! Here on work experience and ready to answer your questions!”, the Twittersphere took it at their cue to send him questions about everything imaginable. By the end of the day, #askeddie was trending.

Isana explains how Eddie came to have his fifteen minutes of fame. “Eddie joined us for three days on work experience initially and spent the next week sat with our Control team (who are based in the same building).

“Funnily enough, he wasn't due to be with us when he burst into the world of viral fame. We actually had to send some of the work experience kids with us home that week as they were caught helping themselves to food out the office fridge and cooking it. As a result, there was space for Eddie to come back to us (and he was really keen to do this anyway); that was the day he became globally famous. He's a great young chap and a pleasure to be around.”

What is the funniest message you’ve ever received?

Neil steps in for this one. “We receive a lot of Tweets from satirical accounts claiming to be run by animals but most of them are best not repeated. These include a flatulent dog and an owl who Tweets about his toilet troubles.

“Animal problems are not only confined to fiction. We once received a report via Twitter from a passenger claiming there was a loose ferret on her train.

“One of my favourite Tweets was a video from a passenger who discovered that the air-con vents on our Class 377 trains were the perfect size for opening a bottle of beer; all you need is a corkscrew on the roof and we'll have it completely covered.”

Does real-time feedback improve the passenger experience?

“Real-time feedback makes a huge difference,” Bradley says. “We can get an issue addressed very quickly this way. For example, if someone tells us about a train that may have some rubbish left on it, we can feed this in to our cleaning team and get it sorted ASAP.”

Can Tweets really improve train operations?

Bradley continues: “Operationally, we often also hear first-hand if a train has come to a standstill or some crossings are stuck – we can feed this straight back to our team in control, who we are based alongside, and they can sort it pretty quickly. This all helps to improve passengers' experiences and address issues as quickly as possible.”

What kind of Tweet gets you onto Southern's “blocked” list?

“We don't like the blocked list,” Bradley says, “but sadly it has to be used on very rare occasions. If people repeatedly break our terms of engagement – even after being reminded of them – then unfortunately we have no option. These kind of people take valuable time away from helping those who need our help.

“And let's be honest, you wouldn't accept being shouted at in the middle of the street repeatedly, nor being wished cancer or illness; it is not a nice part of the job.”

Do you ever receive unreasonable or impossible requests?

Amy tells me: “We don't receive a huge amount of correspondence or requests we deem unreasonable. However, if there is disruption, we do receive Tweets telling us to stop Tweeting and make the trains run on time (which is out of our jurisdiction as a Social Media team!).”

You must hear about some interesting lost property…

“We have had some strange lost property reports,” Amy says, “such as inflatable sharks and prosthetic legs – and we are often able to help locate items for people and reunite them. People do sometimes ask us to arrange taxis for their lost property to be delivered to their homes – this is something we can't really organise.”

Does anyone ever say “thank you”, or is it all fury?

Amy tells me: “Contrary to common belief, we do receive a number of nice Tweets, such as praise for our on-board team and station staff. We always pass these onto relevant managers to ensure that individuals receive the recognition they deserve.

“During #SnowMaggeddon about 60 per cent of the thousands of Tweets we received were all positive around the service, staff and stations. This was really nice to see and felt quite different to most other weeks on the Social Media desk.”